Welcome to Our Blog Conversations Beyond the Classroom!

Welcome to our Eng 100 Blog “Conversation Beyond the Classroom”! The title of this blog refers to the community of active readers & collaborative learners we are creating by sharing our academic writing for Eng 100 with each other + a larger group of students, instructors, academics, and just about anybody who chooses to follow our blog! When you write and post your reader responses here (and, later, as you write your essays for the course), I encourage you to use this audience to conceptualize who you are writing for and, most important, how to communicate your ideas so that this group of academic readers and writers can easily follow your line of thinking. Think about it this way: What do you need to explain and articulate in order for the other bloggers to understand your response to the essays we’ve read in class? What does your audience need to know about those essays and the authors who wrote them? And how can you show your readers, in writing, which ideas you add to these “conversations” that take place in the texts we study? As students of Eng 100, you will use this blog to begin conversations with other academic writers on campus (students and instructors alike). We become active readers of each other’s writing when we comment on posts here. And, best of all, we are using this space to share ideas! I encourage you to use this blog to further think through the topics and writing strategies you will be introduced to this quarter. As always, be sure to give credit to those people whose ideas you borrow for your own thinking and writing (you should do this in the blog by commenting on their post, but you will also be required to cite what you borrow from your peers/instructors if and when it winds up in your essays. More details on that later…). Finally, keep in mind that writing to and for this audience is a good way to prepare for the panel of readers (faculty at WCC) who will be reading and assessing your writing portfolio at the end of the quarter. We hope that as a large group of active readers, we can better prepare each other for this experience. But, in the meantime, let’s have fun with it! I am really excited see how far we can take this together!

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Dustin's view on "A Vision of Students Today"

In the video, “A Vision of Students Today” Michael Wesch (professor of Anthropology at Kansas State University) and his students make numerous assertions about the way college students use technology. The video is made to come off as extremely dramatic by filming in a classroom, having students hold up signs of their inner thoughts, and they add in music that proves it is a serious film. The claims they assert are hidden behind facts that students hold up one by one written on note cards and laptops. Most of the statistics that are presented seem to be negative, but it is the bigger picture the students and professor are trying to convey. Students need to start taking leadership in their education to ensure a better future. A Kansas State student holds up a sign reading, “I pay hundreds for textbooks I never open” and “My neighbor paid for class….but never comes.” These quotes make it very clear that a lot of students aren’t taking advantage of the opportunities and resources that they have the right for. Possibly because the way they are learning isn’t working for them, or they aren’t interested in the tactics used by their professors. I believe the students are using these facts to tell their audience that the way they are learning isn’t working anymore. The facts in the video prove that students spend extended periods of time on the internet, writing emails, and posting to blogs. If students today are technologically minded, why isn’t their education?
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2 comments:

  1. HeatherWilliamsonMay 6, 2011 at 11:43 AM

    I was having a hard time understanding this video but the way you broke it down was really helpful. You brought in quotes and you vividly explained the video without being too wordy. You were able to summarize what they were saying with out putting too much "I say" in it but you still showed personality in the summary. Good job!

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  2. clearlycloudedMay 6, 2011 at 11:45 AM

    i really like the clear and composed way you put this into words and reason. i dont think that technology is evil but almost (sometimes) but the way you state this makes me think that a new technology in teaching really is needed. k

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